In the days when Comment really was Free at the Guardian, an article as dishonest as this would have received short shrift from the commenters below the line. Because since then the Guardian has decided to protect its writers from hearing what their readers think of them, the author, President Clinton’s former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, probably believes he made his case well. Here is the article: “Powerful donors managed to push out Harvard’s Claudine Gay. But at what cost?”
In the fifth paragraph, Mr Reich writes,
I don’t know enough to address the charges of plagiarism against her, but it’s worth noting that all of them apparently came from the same source, via the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative online journal.
He doesn’t know? Could he not have found out? It’s been all over the news, and not just from the Washington Free Beacon, though it was their scoop. (The first two links are to the NYT and the BBC respectively.) It’s not as if Reich would have had to spend months on research and do a paper with Harvard citations and everything. As well as being a former Secretary of Labour, Robert Reich is the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at University of California at Berkeley. One might have expected an academic at a famous American university to be concerned enough by a claim of plagiarism against a distinguished colleague to put some effort into potentially clearing her name rather than weakly throwing his hands in the air and saying, “I dunno”. Unless, of course, he did not wish to know.
A little while later Reich does it again. He writes,
Stefanik then asked the presidents whether calls for intifada against Jews on campus violated the codes of conduct or harassment policies at their universities.
This is deceptive. The answers from the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania that caused such deep outrage were not said in response to Elise Stefanik asking them about whether calls for intifada against Jews violated the codes of conducts or harassment policies at their universities. They were said in response to Elise Stefanik asking them whether calls for genocide against Jews violated the codes of conduct or harassment policies at their universities. Watch the video. The relevant exchange is right at the start. Rep. Stefanik says, “And, Dr Gay, at Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no?”. Dr Gay replies, “It can be, depending on the context.”
Genocide. Not intifada. Genocide. My apologies for being so repetitive, but the difference between “intifada” and “genocide” matters rather a lot.
Weirdly, one of Reich’s subsequent paragraph gets this right:
They should have answered unambiguously and unequivocally that calls for genocide of any group are intolerable.
What happened to make Reich change from claiming the equivocal answers from the three university presidents came in response to a question about “calls for intifada against Jews” in one paragraph to correctly saying that the issue was “calls for genocide against Jews” three paragraphs later? One might expect a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley would see the importance of accurately quoting someone. Unless, of course, the professor of public policy wanted the public to be confused.
Related post: “Why you can be a free speech absolutist and still think the presidents of Harvard, MIT and UPenn should resign in disgrace.”
The problem is people don’t seem to get that Gay’s non-condemnation of the anti-Israeli protests and plagiarism thing are two separate issues. Her students were more than happy to back her on the “genocide Israel” front but want her head over the plagiarism double standard. Obviously, once she went before Congress people started looking into her background far more thoroughly than the Board of Regents (or whatever the Harvard version is called) did when they hand picked her to be president based on her anemic academic background and her twin assets of skin and sex, but once her rampant plagiarism was uncovered the student body wanted her gone. After all, how can they possibly be expelled for doing exactly what the president of one of the finest universities on the planet did from grad school onward? Had the students not demanded she step down all the Board of Regents had to do was wait until this whole thing blew over, but now she had to go because her customers demanded it.
This whole thing could have been avoided had Gay simply said “you can’t call for genocide on campus, period. If you want to do it, do it on public property but I won’t allow it on Harvard property at all.” But the Board of Regents mishandled the entire affair right from the start and the end result is employers are rescinding job offers to Harvard graduates (and not just those who were protesting in favor of the Palestinians), alumni have revoked endowments, and has irreparably harmed the Harvard brand. All they ended up doing was making Harvard the Bud Light of academia.
I read Gay’s resignation letter and latter op-ed in the New York Times. The op-ed seemed self serving which was hardly surprising, but I formed an opinion that Gay was affronted that she had to defend her actions. I wonder if she actually understood where she had gone wrong?
In her mind she did nothing wrong and was the victim of right-wing racist witch hunt.
This wasn’t about free speech, this wasn’t about Israel or Palestine or Hamas or Gaza, this wasn’t about racism or sexism; this was entirely about academic integrity and even the students that supported her on her politics realized that.
She never should have been appointed president in the first place based on her sparse publishing record and had the BoR done their due diligence in investigating her background instead of just checking the diversity boxes they would have found the plagiarism accusations.
From the OP
“Unless, of course, he did not wish to know.”
There you have it. Nobody wanted to know nuffink. She gave the appearance of being qualified for the various posts she rose to. Her pathetic academic achievements and output gave a just-sufficient veneer of credibility to her suitability for these posts – just sufficient that nobody felt the need to inquire further – because inquiring further was the absolute-last thing anybody involved wanted to do. Harvard wanted/needed a black, female president – any academic meeting those qualifications would have got the post, it just happened to be her. Job Done – Move On.
The scary part (to me) is that, if she had just been briefed and prepped more-carefully for her Congressional testimony, she could have simply avoided all of this, and would likely still be in post and the cynosure of all eyes. It was fairly-clear to me that she was blindsided by the repeated questions, and she’s not skilled at thinking on her feet, and she gave the answer that would have gone down just fine on-campus, or in the echo-chambers in which she usually moves – but she forgot where she was. Congressional testimony is filled with object-lessons on how to avoid answering direct questions, she should have watched some more C-Span and taken notes.
llater,
llamas
her twin assets of skin and sex
Hardly the only person appointed to high office solely on these biological requirements, and I thought we had to accept that biology is irrelevant in “other contexts”. The incumbent VPOTUS and at least one Supreme Court Justice were appointed in a manner that left no room for doubt as in “the next (insert role) will be a black woman”.
Even now the madness continues as I have seen numerous quotes from people of small intellect but high influence demanding that the next Harvard President be…………….see if you can guess.
Clue – it includes the word “another”.
It doesn’t matter who or why someone accused her of plagiarism. Anyone can accuse anyone of a crime and the case is pursued on its merits. Apparently the case was proven so the accuser was correct. To try and confuse the situation with implied prejudice is a good trick and works quite often.
Best comment on Twitter: “You’re telling me the president of Harvard resigned over pelagianism?! In 2024?!??!”
Robert Reich’s article seems confused. But who knows if he wrote it? It may have been a job for an intern. He’s a busy man, after all.
Off topic: I am watching Eye in the Sky (2015), one of the most gripping dramas of this century, in my arrogant opinion.
You could see it as a variant of the Trolley Problem; but it is of interest to me that it is the “human rights” representative in the war room who causes the delay that ultimately leads to the death of an innocent young girl.
Your distinction between “intifada” and “genocide” doesn’t convince. Intifadists mean the same thing by those two terms, and theirs is the definition that counts.
The dishonesty starts with how both the Guardian and Robert Reich himself are normally described.
They are normally described as “liberal” – they are not liberal, they are SOCIALIST – they support ever greater Collectivism.
“But Paul – Robert Reich is a member of the American establishment”.
Yes he is, are so are many people who share his Collectivism – which indicates what the American establishment (including the Corporate Bib Business part of it) actually is.
They may NOT be Marxist – but they are most certainly Collectivist, they hate liberty and they hate truth. Their aim is to stamp their boots down on the faces of ordinary people – for ever.
Understand that and this wildly dishonest article about the fraud Claudine Gay, and so much else Guardian content, such as the covering up of the deaths of millions of people in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, and so much of the political and academic work of Robert Reich himself – becomes exactly what one expect of these people.
Robert Reich is a serial liar because there is no other way, other than by lying, that his agenda of Collectivism (tyranny) can be pushed – as all its basic assumptions (for example that government spending and regulations make poverty less, rather than more, than it otherwise would be) were refuted long ago (as he knows very well).
No one can look at what has been done to such cities as Chicago, or such States as California and honestly declare that “Progressive” policies have been good for ordinary people. Members of the establishment elite, such as Robert Reich, support such policies because they want power over ordinary people – they like the idea of being able to say “jump” and then watching people having to jump.
It is that brutally simple.
As for his lies about calls for genocide, or his lies about “not knowing” about the many incidents of plagiarism from Claudine Gay (basically her “academic work” has been a fraud right from her doctorial thesis) they are of a piece with his lies about so many other things – it is who he is, and it is what the Guardian is.
“Professor” of government and “African and African-American studies”.
How can you possibly plagiarise that?
I’ll say this again, the price of free speech is free speech.
It is certainly true that the first amendment restricts only the action of government, and I would not allow this sort of reprehensible speech in my company office or my home. But universities are different. The very nature of a university DEMANDS unadulterated free speech. It is the very reason for tenure for example. To me, restricting freedom of speech on a University campus is about as bad as it gets, I think it is WORSE than the government censoring speech.
So Universities absolutely should allow this speech, just as they should allow Riley Gaines to speak, or Salman Rushdie, or Al Sharpton. Of course when speech becomes physical intimidation or graffiti, or various other things beyond simple words coming from the mouth not only should the university act, but the police should act.
Moreover, I don’t think the University administration should condemn such speech or support it. They should say nothing at all. They should never say anything at all. They should be neutral, in all such matters. I don’t want them condemning Ms. Gaines, for example, or spouting the green agenda or blabbing on about DEI. They should STFU. A University is supposed to be a cauldron of ideas, and the idea that the administration should put a finger on the scale poisons that cauldron. Of course specific professors may, in fact should, share their views on an equal footing.
Of course you might call “hypocrisy” since they regularly comment on the right’s views. But I suggest they shut up about that too. Much as the way to stop racism is to stop being racist, the way to stop judging people on the color of their skin is to stop judging them by the color of their skin. So too, the way to fix free speech is to stop banning it. And the way to stop the University administration speaking out of turn is to tell them to STFU.
I think ex-President Gay is the very epitome of what is wrong with University system, so I will not shed a tear for her. But, in a sense she is surely right to be hesitant to condemn speech on her campus, and all those who love free speech should feel very uncomfortable with these events. Because if you think your right wing or libertarian views are not next in the “demand condemnation” list you might want to reconsider.
I’m sick of this idea that we expect every institution to comment on every issue of the day, every matter of public policy. Most of the time is is orthogonal to their purpose, and none of their damn business.
“Next”!? Done and gone, more like it.
I could never be a Quaker. I can support nonviolence as a philosophy, but I cannot support pacifism. A bridge too far. I won’t start a fight, but, if you hit me, I’m hitting back, hopefully harder. None of this rolling over to show the other cheek.
I think this translates to the area of speech. I will fight to preserve both my and John’s right to say what we want to say. But when John instead fights to stop me from speaking, my fight on his behalf, for his right to speak, ends, at least until he sees the light.
Yes, at times my pure principles are going to give way to practicality. I realize I then lose that aura of the pure speech absolutist. But I could spend a lifetime listening to John proselytize over my silence while I wait for him to understand that I’m right and he’s wrong. I’d rather just shut him up until he stops shutting me up.
It’s speech non-violence versus speech pacifism.
Fraser Orr’s comment, Jn 7 5.34 am, should be ‘quote of the day’. It’s one of the best I’ve read for years.
I agree with this. But what if the University administration says something akin to “No, if I disagree with speech of course I will ban it.” That has essentially been the practice of American universities for the last couple of decades. And what if that University is publicly funded, or at least receives public funds?
@bobby b
Yes, at times my pure principles are going to give way to practicality. I realize I then lose that aura of the pure speech absolutist. But I could spend a lifetime listening to John proselytize over my silence while I wait for him to understand that I’m right and he’s wrong. I’d rather just shut him up until he stops shutting me up.
But why would you want to shut him up when his own words condemn him? I am not at all suggesting passivity, I am suggesting that we advocate just as aggressively for free speech we hate as for speech we love because we are not advocating for the speech but the idea that everyone should be able to speak.
Certainly, when the University administration tries to shut down speech you approve of you should passionately protest against it. But if you don’t protest similarly for speech you dislike then your original protest is not for the principle of free speech but for the actual speech you advocate — and that is one you are certain to loose. What people like you and I say, it isn’t popular any more.
@ferox
I agree with this. But what if the University administration says something akin to “No, if I disagree with speech of course I will ban it.” That has essentially been the practice of American universities for the last couple of decades. And what if that University is publicly funded, or at least receives public funds?
I hate this “receives public funds” argument, it is a tool that the left uses to control everything. Why? Because nearly every organization of some size receives some public funds, because the government takes so much money out of the economy. The solution of course is to STOP giving public funds to the Universities (if you want that to happen BTW, vote for Ramaswamy who has a stated policy of shutting down the Department of Education).
In the meantime if the Universities don’t allow speech they don’t like you should humiliate them, publicly protest. Demand they explain what sort of University is so scared of ideas they have to silence the speakers. And you have to do that not just for ideas you support but ideas you hate. Because if you advocate only for ideas you like you are advocating for the idea, not the basic right that everyone has the to speak, and the idea that a University should be a place of unfettered discussion.
I loathe these “from the river to the sea” people, but my greatest disappointment with Musk, of whom I am a fanboy, was that he banned it from X.
Steven R: “All they ended up doing was making Harvard the Bud Light of academia.”
Spot-on.
Maybe we are also getting an early idea of what happens if or when students/post-grads use chatGPT etc to do their dissertations.
One of the mistakes that is being made is that it is about someone being black and female.
If Claudine Gay was black, female and a CONSEREVATIVE she would never have got her position – she would not have even been considered.
And if the person was white, male (and straight), and a LEFTIST (a Collectivist) the person would still do well.
Under the tap dance about race, sex and sexual orientation – this really about whether or not someone is a Collectivist.
If someone is a Collectivist, then the institutions (including Harvard) will support them (the serial plagiarist Claudine Gay is still being paid almost a million Dollars a year), but if a person OPPOSES the “Progressive” cause of tyranny – then the institutions will seek to destroy them.
As for Chat GPT (Johnathan Peace) – it produces leftist answers, filled with falsehoods, on political and cultural matters. So universities will be fine with dissertations filled with it.
Yes – the “education” system, and the other institutions, really are that corrupt, that intellectually, and morally, bankrupt.